


Over Here

by boombangbing



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-01
Updated: 2011-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-15 07:11:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boombangbing/pseuds/boombangbing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The progression of the alt!trio before and after the season two finale, and how Fauxlivia copes with being back. Some swearing, spoilers up to 3x08, and, strangely, for <i>Terminator 2</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over Here

Lincoln had known of Charlie Francis for a year or so, seen him around the building, seen him talking to Broyles, they'd even been on the same taskforce, once, to investigate those monster sightings. That hadn't gone so well for Charlie. Lincoln had felt bad about it, had signed the card that was passed around, but that was as far as it went. Mostly he was just glad that it wasn't him with a belly full of mutant tapeworms.

Then Olivia joined the team, and he remembered her: she'd won an Olympic gold medal for marksmanship back in the late nineties, and if he'd thought she was hot then...

Within a couple of weeks, she'd buddied up with Francis; they got coffee-substitute together, came through the door in the morning together, got into each other's personal space, laughed and joked with each other like they'd been friends for years.

“You know,” Olivia had said one evening, after Lincoln had been reamed out by Broyles over missing a clue in some case, “you can join us at the bar, if you want to.” She had her coat in her hand, her newly cut bangs falling into her eyes as she looked at him. Charlie was at the door already, holding it open, fingers tapping against the frame.

She kissed Lincoln for the first time a week later.

-

As it turned out, Charlie and Olivia did already know each other – he'd been her firearms trainer for six months at Quantico, before he was put back out into the field. Sometimes Lincoln wonders if that had anything to do with why Charlie was passed over for division team leader. He's older than Lincoln, has more experience, is loved by everyone. Lincoln wonders about it, but doesn't dig too deep – he doesn't much care _how_ he got the job, just that he _did_.

Still, sometimes... “Where did those come from?” he asks, pointing to the box of chocolates that Olivia's picking through.

“Grateful mom sent them to Charlie for saving her kid from the amber,” she replies, hand to her mouth as she chews.

“I seem to recall that we _all_ helped save that kid.” Damn brat ran into the quarantine zone, all three of them risked permanent amberfication saving her.

“But Charlie was the only one who carried her out in his big, strong arms.” She mock swoons and settles on the edge of Charlie's desk as he comes back to it, stack of papers in hand. He raises an eyebrow and sits down. “You know how moms love Charlie.”

“Doesn't seem fair that he should get _all_ the presents,” Lincoln mutters. He reaches forward to snag a chocolate; she slaps his hand away and Charlie smirks down at the file he's reading.

“Well, he's the nice one.” She leans over and wraps an arm around Charlie's shoulders. “If we were nice to people, we'd get chocolates and cookies and gift cards and flowers too.”

“Or you could probably just use your boy band good looks, if you weren't so obnoxious.” Charlie smiles blandly at him, Olivia's arm still around him.

Lincoln shakes his head. “Way too much effort, I'll just buy my own cookies.”

-

She is different. He tells Charlie that she's fine, that the stress of the job gets to everyone sometimes (though, he never thought it would happen to Liv; his money was on Astrid, or maybe even Broyles), but she is different. For a few weeks, she's unstable like he's never seen of her before: first she says flat out that she's not their Olivia, and then once that subsides (psychotic break, they say), she's fragile in a way he can't define and doesn't understand. Then she gets forgetful, misses shots she could easily make. She doesn't flirt with Charlie like she used to, though sometimes she stares at him like she's trying to memorise every word he says. After a time, she stops talking to Lincoln altogether – she still _speaks_ to him, but it's not the same, there's a distance between them and he can't work out why.

And then Broyles dies, and she snaps back to herself. At the funeral, Broyles's wife and child approach her, and they smile and talk like she's an old friend. She returns the smiles with a tight one of her own, and an almost imperceptible frown. Eventually, Broyles's wife steps back and says, 'well, thank you for coming, Agent Dunham', before leading her son away.

After that day, they barely see Olivia for weeks. Broyles is replaced by Lieutenant Colonel John Scott, and he tells them that she's 'on loan' to another division and that she'll be back soon. _Don't worry_ , he says, _she's in safe hands_. That doesn't stop Charlie from trying to find out where she is from Astrid, and it doesn't stop Lincoln from ignoring the insubordination.

A month and a half later, she's back. Her clothes are new, and she's cut her hair to her shoulders; it's a darker shade of brown than he remembers. She won't say where she's been, just that it was confidential.

Charlie asks, “are you okay?”, as if he's asking after a stubbed toe, voice lazy as ever, but all three of them know exactly what he means.

Olivia paints on her biggest smile, and glances at Lincoln. “I'm perfect.”

“Okay,” Charlie says, “good. Then how about you stop slacking off and do some work, for once?”

-

The rifts are getting worse. In the next two months, quarantine instances on the East Coast alone go up by twenty percent. Things slip through. Monstrous men terrorise neighbourhoods. Scott has a lot of private meetings with Secretary Bishop. Astrid refuses to discuss the things she hears-- sometimes Lincoln wonders if she remembers them at all.

Olivia works constantly, it seems like. She used to duck out of work whenever she could, spend time with Frank, go to clubs. Sometimes she'd bring Charlie and Lincoln along too, and laugh if Frank got jealous.

Frank's gone, she tells them. “I dumped him,” she says. “It wasn't working out.”

“Why didn't you tell us?” Lincoln asks, and she shrugs. It's late – early – and it's going to get light outside soon. They should all be at home in bed, but there are bodies turning up in subway trains, endoskeletons on the outside.

“I guess it just didn't come up,” she says.

They work until dawn. At some point, Lincoln doses off, cheek resting on his desk, and he only wakes up when Charlie slaps him on the back.

“Go home, Lee.”

“What time is it?” He wipes drool from his hand onto his pants. He grimaces.

“Five-thirty AM. If you want people to respect you, probably shouldn't let them see you drool on your desk.” Charlie pounds him on the back again, and heads towards the locker room. Olivia's gone too, and after a couple of minutes deliberation, Lincoln gets up and follows Charlie.

He stops just shy of the door.

Olivia is standing in the middle of the room, thumbs hooked through the belt loops of her pants. Her shirt's gone, just a pale pink bra remaining. Her torso is long and lean, and Lincoln can't help but follow the curve of her waist up to the swell of her breasts. Her head is tilted to one side, watching as Charlie pulls off his shoes.

“Hey,” he says, “stop checking out my ass.”

She smiles. “Come here,” she says, and he does. She moves her hands from her own hips to his, twisting her fingers around the bottom of his t-shirt.

“Hey,” he says again, and leaves it there. She smiles, again, and he lifts his arms obediently when she tugs his t-shirt up and over his head. There are scars all across his back, white and stretched out with age.

(Lincoln asked him about them once, how he got them, why he hadn't had them treated. Charlie had looked at him, in that perennially calm fucking way he has, and said,

“Kid, treatment like that was expensive, back in the day.”)

Olivia runs her fingers over the lines, hands trailing around his chest and up his back. Charlie lets her, stays perfectly still and studies her face as she maps out his scars with her hands.

“I missed this,” she says. “Didn't think I would, but...”

“Are you gonna tell me what happened?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “Probably not.”

He kisses her: just rocks into her space, lets her grip his shoulders, fingers digging in. He presses his hands to the back of her neck, curling his fingers around her hair. They move fluidly, naturally, with each other; clearly not the first time they've done this. (Lincoln remembers that one time she kissed him, after they closed their first case together: they were at a bar, and she had a virgin piña colada in her hand. He pressed back too hard when her lips touched his, and she pulled away, laughing. 'Maybe you aren't such a bad boss, after all,' she had said.)

In the bullpen, the door opens. Astrid enters, coat, hat, and hair neat as a pin, her little briefcase at her side. She pointedly doesn't look at Lincoln as she scurries to her post.

He steps into the locker room. “Astrid's here, in case you wanted to keep making out...” he says, and makes for his locker, already tugging at his t-shirt. Olivia loosens her grip on Charlie.

“Don't be jealous,” she says, “it doesn't suit you.”

-

She invites them over on a Sunday, a rare one that all three of them have off. Lincoln gets there on time, two o'clock like she said, and of course Charlie's already there, sitting on the couch, shirt sleeves rolled up.

Lincoln stands by the open door, looks at all the boxes and trash bags placed around the living room.

“Why are you fidgeting over there?” Charlie asks.

Lincoln looks at the pile of magazines, photos, and old, old paperback books on the coffee table (Frank collected them, Lincoln recalls; Olivia never much cared for them) in front of Charlie. “Why are you rooting through all of Liv's stuff like a creepy stalker?”

“Don't worry, I left her underwear drawer for you.” He pauses to let Lincoln glare at him. “Liv's having a... spring clean, I guess. Everything must go.”

“Why?” Lincoln steps into the apartment, and takes a better look. Whole shelves are empty, bare nails protrude from the walls, each of the boxes are clearly marked in black ink: **GARBAGE** , **CHARITY** , **STORAGE** , **FRANK**.

“I dunno,” Charlie says. He collects up a stack of the paperbacks and drops them into a box marked for Frank near the couch. “But she wants it done, so we're gonna help, right?”

“I mean, sure...” Lincoln murmurs, and toes a trash bag until it falls open to reveal piles of clothes. He recognises some of the items.

“You can have them, if you want,” Olivia says, coming out of the bedroom carrying a dozen shirts on hangers. She smirks and cocks an eyebrow at him before dumping them in a new bag. “I don't think they'd fit you, but more power to you if you want to try.”

“I don't know, Liv, it's not like he has any muscle on him,” Charlie says, and they both stare at him appraisingly.

“I could get you both fired, you know,” Lincoln grouses, and picks up the bag to tie it closed.

“Only when we're on the clock,” Olivia says brightly.

-

When they're done, the apartment is almost empty. 'More space for my shoes,' she says with a smile.

They take the trash bags to her dumpster, the storage boxes to her locker, and the charity boxes to her car. Frank's boxes, she says, can stay by the front door until he gets back from Texas.

“Does he even know that the two of you have broken up?” Lincoln asks, as he slides the final box over to the door.

“I emailed him,” she says, idly browsing through her laserdisc collection. “I'm sure he'll work it out. How about _Terminator_? I love Lance Henriksen.”

They bicker through the first movie, and clean out most of Olivia's kitchen cupboards – which, admittedly, are pretty empty already. By the time Charlie gets up and grabs the second movie off the shelf, Olivia seems subdued. She watches him as he fast forwards to the beginning of the movie, shuffles down the couch when he bumps his hip against hers, clasps her hands in her lap.

Lincoln elbows her. “What's wrong?”

She rolls her eyes. “Nothing. God, think I can't take a little movie gore? Just 'cause _The Exorcism_ freaked you out...”

“Uh huh,” he says, and kicks her shin. She grabs his offending foot and pulls until he slides off the couch.

They settle for a while, mostly because Charlie threatens to douse both of them with cold water. Olivia seems to be enjoying the movie (which she's seen multiple times, and at least twice before with them), until they get to the scene with John's foster parents.

 _We should tell John to get rid of that fuckin' mutt_ , Todd Voight says, and the T-1000 impersonating Janelle Voight spears him with her arm. _John, where are you?_ she asks down the phone.

Olivia shifts and glances away, then at Charlie. He looks back at her and holds her gaze. She looks back at the screen again, at Lance Henriksen saying _your foster parents are dead_ , and Charlie keeps staring.

At length, he lazily throws an arm around her, and she relaxes into him. “Hey,” he says, jostling her slightly. “You're gonna be fine.”

Lincoln squeezes her knee. “You know we've got your back.”

She purses her lips. “This isn't an opportunity to feel me up,” she says.

She doesn't move his hand.


End file.
